24 Jan 10 When Should You Change Your Blog Theme?

This is the question that baffles most of the newbie bloggers and some pro bloggers as well. They are not sure, until experienced enough in marketing and branding, when to change the theme of their respective blog, or should they change it at all?

Before I tell you what to do, let me put on table the pros and cons of changing the theme of your blog frequently.

Pros

It makes the blog look fresh.
You can stay up-to-date with the recent trend.
A new theme will add newness to your blog.
It will break the monotony.

Cons

A change in the blog theme may weaken your brand.
Your loyal readers may get alarmed (slight chance).
Your readers will have to re-acclimatize with the new design.
It may be perceived as a change in owner or deviation from the proven path.

Now, as we have the pros and cons of change in the blog theme in front of us, we should consider the scenario when the blog theme should be changed.

When making a big shift, content-wise, or strategy-wise. For example: you have decided to convert your one-author blog to multi-author blog, or you have decided to give it a magazine layout, or you may have decided to add video contents, which was not possible to do without changing the theme.
If your blog is as old as Uncle Sam. If you have been blogging since the age of Gutenberg then you need to change your blog theme to incorporate the inventions and developments ever since. The new theme will help you connect with the new audience.
When you want to shift your focus to another group of audience, demographic or psychographic shift.

In any case, you should not change your blog theme many times a year. Change your theme at max once a year. But, in special cases like your blog is not working well with the current theme or for the current group then you can reduce the frequency, but as soon as you find the theme that works well, stick with it.

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/digg_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/reddit_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/dzone_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/stumbleupon_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/delicious_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/blinklist_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/blogmarks_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/furl_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/newsvine_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/technorati_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/magnolia_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/google_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/myspace_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/facebook_48.png

http://blog.gossimer.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/yahoobuzz_48.png

Tags: Audience, blog, bloggers, Break, Current Group, Focus, Gutenberg, Incorporate, Inventions, Loyal Readers, Magazine Layout, Marketing Branding, Monotony, Pros And Cons, Trend, Uncle Sam, Video Contents

Filed in blogging with 0 Comments

28 Jun 09 SEO SIMPLIFIED: Black Hat SEO Techniques

Taking our discussion on Black Hat SEO forward, in this article we shall focus on the techniques that have been denounced categorically as Black Hat SEO techniques by the SEO community as well as search engines, and which you should never use when optimizing your website.

Keyword Stuffing

This one is the first in the list of certified Black Hat SEO techniques. If you stuff your article with too many keywords, or put a list of keywords and nothing else in your webpage then your site will surely get penalized by the search engines. For more details, read How to use keywords in content.

Text Cloaking

Text cloaking means hiding the website’s text behind the background. This is done by making the text and the background color same. It is often used by spammy websites to hide the list of keywords from the visitors but keep it visible to the search engine spiders. In some cases the website also uses different texts for search engines and different text for visitors. In this case, the text written for the search engine ranking purpose is cloaked.

Doorway Pages

A doorway page is another failed Black Hat SEO attempt to fool the search engine. A doorway page is just like any other HTML page optimized for a couple of keywords or key phrases, but unlike other HTML pages, it is not visible to the visitors. Only the target search engines and their spiders, for which the page is designed, can see this page. When a user clicks on the doorway page in SERP (search engine result page), he or she is redirected to another page, the real website or webpage for which this doorway page was constructed. This activity is undertaken with an intention to artificially boost the traffic to the website.

Tags: Attempt, Background Color, Black Hat, Black Stuff, Doorway Page, Doorway Pages, Focus, Html Pages, Intention, Optimizing Your Website, Phrases, Search Engine Result, Search Engine Spiders, Search Engines, SEO, Target Search, Texts, traffic

Filed in SEO with 0 Comments

24 Jan 10 When Should You Change Your Blog Theme?

Pros

Cons

28 Jun 09 SEO SIMPLIFIED: Black Hat SEO Techniques

Keyword Stuffing

Text Cloaking

Doorway Pages

Recent Posts

Gossimer Sites

Other Useful Sites

Categories

Gossimer in the News

Gossimer Promotions and Announcements

Support Notifications